World Premiere!

Just got word that 'topi' has been accepted to the Rhode Island International Film Festival! The festival will be held in Providence, RI from August 4-9, 2009.

*** Update: June 30 ***

'topi' has also been accepted to Animation Block Party in Brooklyn, where it will screen on July 26, 2009, making that the first public screening.

I'm stoked!

Done!

Yesterday was my final 5.1 surround mix, and I did my HD layback this afternoon. The layback isn't quite done due to technical problems, but should be in a couple of days.

I had two mixers this time - Paul André Fonarev and David Lankton - who did a fantastic job. One of their best ideas was to repurpose an unused music cue to give the climactic confrontation scene a lot more weight. It was scary adding music at the last minute to a scene that I'd conceived as music-less from the very beginning, but I'm confident that it was the right call.

This is the final version of the scene with the music cue:

Title Font

I ended up settling on the title font really late (the night before going to LA to do my layback).

Here's some options I considered:

And the winner:

I liked starting with a lower case 't' because it reinforces the idea that the prayer cap is a small difference between Hindus and Muslims. This version of the title is the most readable and clear, yet retains a distinct identity.

The font was something I downloaded, but I ended up tweaking it slightly for clarity. Here's what the raw font looks like:

I do like how the font looks in general, so I used it unmodified in the end credits. The line across the words is similar to Devnagari (Hindi) script, while the serifs and dots have an Islamic influence, again complementing the theme of my film.

New goon line

Old (can't use because the recording is bad):

New1:

New2:

New3:

(The new recording is me!)

Final chase

Score 6th Draft

Ludwig tried adding a flute where the vocals used to be:

Notes to Self

Towards the end of the production process, it's interesting to reflect on these notes that I scribbled at a much earlier stage when things were not looking so good: